Wednesday, September 22, 2004

The 35-hour week and so on

The FT was fairly sniffy (about Chirac) : 'Last year's much trumpeted
pension reform , to bring public sector pensions gradually into line with
the private sector. excluded the railway and power workers because of their
militancy. The president has supported the 35-hour week, which the business
community blames for a decline in France's international competitiveness.'
(Leader, 4 Sep)

SIAW wrote
that France and Russia were 'both of them, funnily enough, still capitalist
states the last time we looked.' Well yes, there is a lot of empty rhetoric
about resisting mondialisation, but undeniably in France and Germany
the frontier of political debate is different from that in the UK. Apart
from the 35-hour week and more generous (unaffordable ?) welfare and
health systems, French workers are resisting privatisation in gas and electricity.

France Inter was trumpeting the other day Renault's creation of thousands
of jobs. A more severe crisis seems to lie in Germany. Volkswagen is threatening
to relocate to Eastern Europe. The reason may lie in the figures highlighted
by Le Monde Économie for labour costs in manufacturing
industry (in dollars) : Germany 24.31, US 21.37, EU15 19.87, Japan 19.01, UK 18.03,
France 17.27, Poland 4.1...

Meanwhile, the 'Mrs Thatchers' are waiting : Frau Merkel of the Christian
Democrats and Nicholas Sarkozy (can we really believe that 70-something
Chirac rather than Sarko will be the right's candidate in 2007 ? )

In the local elections in Saxony and Brandenburg, both the SPD and the
Christian Democrats lost ground. Both the far-right NPD and the former
communist PDS made gains. Someone said that in many cases their propaganda
is indistinguishable. Their increased vote seems to be a protest against
Schröder's 'reforms' (cutting welfare). Even Daniel Cohn-Bendit of
the Greens, commenting on France Inter, 20 Sep, thought that the problems
financing the welfare systems had to be faced.

A good old bit of socialist theory : ' "Work without end" has been the
history of capitalism. Fordism added `endless consumption' and the
Keynesian conviction - check the old textbooks - that expanded output
should always have precedence over reduced work-time...'
('A World Market of Opportunities? Capitalist Obstacles and Left Economic
Policy', The Socialist Register1997
)